Kukla's Korner Hockey

Category: NHL-Officiating

One week into training camp and so far all the talk has been about how the referees are ruining the game of hockey.

Boston’s Brad Marchand called the NHL’s crackdown on cheating in the faceoff circle “an absolute joke.” Toronto’s Leo Komarov is upset that if he chooses to wear a visor, it must actually be low enough to protect his eyes. And there have been so many slashing penalties called that Maple Leafs head coach Mike Babcock joked he hasn’t been able to evaluate anything other than the power play and penalty kill.

The hockey might be sloppy for this time of year. But when it comes to criticizing the men in stripes, everyone seems to be in mid-season form.

Do they have a point? Well, kind of.

Prior to Wednesday night’s games, there were 91 slashing minors and 16 faceoff violations called in the 19 exhibition games in which off-ice officials kept real-time statistics. It seems excessive. And yet, this is the time to be excessive.

During Monday night’s seven preseason games with available statistics, 41 minor penalties for slashing were whistled, for an average of nearly six per game.

Though it is not a direct comparison, since last year’s preseason data is not available, there were 791 slashing minor penalties called last regular season, for an average of just 0.6 slashing calls per game.

That is a nearly 10-fold jump, sure to snap players to attention to the NHL’s new zero-tolerance policy. There were four slashing infractions in the first period alone of the Rangers-Islanders exhibition at Madison Square Garden on Monday. No preseason game so far has featured fewer than four slashing calls.

The idea is to police slashing more stringently from the outset of the preseason to allow players seven or eight games to adapt before the regular season when the same standard will be in place....

Not only will referees be more focused on slashing, incoming NHL senior vice-president of player safety George Parros said recently that egregious slashes will be met with supplemental discipline.

“We’ll be looking at them more,” Parros said on Sept. 7. “If they seem to be more intentful or directed towards the fingers and hands with greater force, we’re going to be looking to do something: fines, suspensions, whatever it might be.

The 60-minute exhibition that followed featured a combined 20 minor penalties for the Capitals and New Jersey Devils. While no rules have officially been changed, early preseason action has shown that the NHL is cracking down on slashing and faceoff violations. Consider the message received after Washington was called for five of those penalties in the exhibition game.

“There’s still a little bit of confusion on everybody’s side,” Eller said. “But you have these games to get these things nailed down and for the players to adjust. It is zero tolerance, and you know, we did that as the game went on.”

Said forward Alex Chiasson: “Obviously, they’re trying to implement some new rules. But for the first 10 minutes, it was one of the weirdest things I’ve ever seen.”

There’s been talk of being harder on slashing following several wrist, hand and finger injuries last season from dangerous stick work. “Now, as soon as your stick is off the ice and you touch the other players’ stick or hands, it was zero tolerance today,” Eller said. More surprising was the three faceoff violation penalties called in the first period of the game. That also represented a new emphasis from the league. “Cheating” on faceoffs has been commonplace, and for centers who’ve made their name winning faceoffs with a certain style and routine, staying perfectly within the red lines in the circle was an adjustment.

(Imke) Reimers and her colleagues collected data from every NHL game from Jan. 1, 1996, to Dec. 11, 2015. They were interested in particulars such as a referee’s total number of games, penalties called, a referee’s years of experience, and number of games a referee worked with a specific team.

Experience varies from old-timers like O’Halloran to Garrett Rank, who first pulled on NHL stripes on Jan. 15, 2015. The veteran crew of Dave Jackson and Marc Joannette, for example, called the Montreal-Detroit game on Oct. 17, 2015. Combined, the duo had worked 205 Canadiens games and 134 Red Wings games over their careers. Conversely, Eric Furlatt was the lone referee for the Montreal-Detroit game on Feb. 11, 2002. Furlatt had only worked five Canadiens games and one Wings game before then.

Some of the results of their research:

■ A first-year referee calls an average of 24 penalty minutes per game. A second-year referee averages 18 PIMs per game. Expected penalty minutes decline by 0.262 for each additional season of experience. A two-referee team with 10 total seasons calls 2.6 fewer penalty minutes per game than a duo with no experience.

■ Each additional season of a referee’s experience with a specific team decreases penalty minutes per game by 0.972.

■ Of all the months, referees call the most penalties in October.

“What we were really interested in is if you have a regulatory agency — in banking, finance, stocks, anything, really — we are concerned with fairness,” Reimers said.

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The NHL is considering issuing a minor penalty for a failed coach's challenge for offside.

The penalty would be instead of losing a timeout for a failed challenge under the current rules. The league's general managers discussed the possible change at a meeting Thursday ahead of this weekend's NHL draft in Chicago.

Replay reviews for possible offside have attracted attention in the playoffs the past two years. Penguins coach Mike Sullivan got a Nashville goal wiped out in Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Final in May. St. Louis star Vladimir Tarasenko had a playoff goal wiped out by a razor-thin offside ruling during a series against Chicago in 2016.

NHL executive Colin Campbell says the next stop for the possible rule change is the league's competition committee.

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. – Kevin Collins, Jack Parker, Ben Smith, Ron Wilson and Scott Young will be enshrined into the United States Hockey Hall of Fame as the Class of 2017, it was announced today by USA Hockey.

“Each of the inductees has contributed in extraordinary fashion to the growth and development of hockey in our country,” said Jim Smith, president of USA Hockey. “The members of the Class of 2017 have positively impacted the game, from the grassroots to the highest levels, through playing, coaching and officiating. We very much look forward to formally enshrining each of them into the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame later this year.”

The game needs to be cleaned up, and maybe it’s as simple as enforcing the rules as they’re written to stop the slashing, the running of goalies in their crease and infringing the circle on faceoffs.

There’s no question there has been more stick work as players struggle to keep the opposition closely guarded. The constant slashing was a problem all season. It’s actually pretty simple — use a two-hander on a player across his hands or break his stick in half with a slash and it’s off to the penalty box.

In some cases, it should be a double-minor, a major or even a match penalty and ejection for attempt to injure. Think Calgary’s Johnny Gaudreau, who was slashed repeatedly by Minnesota and broke his finger in November, or Pittsburgh’s Sidney Crosby on Ottawa’s Marc Methot in March.

Same for running goalies. The rules state no contact with the goaltender when he’s in his crease. That’s why the crease exists. But how many times have we seen goalies knocked down, or, in the case of Carolina’s Eddie Lack, knocked out after a collision?

NHL commissioner Gary Bettman says goaltender interference is a judgment call. NHL referees are supposed to be the best in the world. Why then can’t they exert proper judgment and determine an infraction was committed?

“I hear year after year how the league and everyone loves how the Penguins play they play pure hockey and they skate.’ Well, now it’s going to have to change and I feel bad about it, but it’s the only way we can do it. We’re going to have to get one or two guys…and some of these games that should be just good hockey games will turn into a sh—show. We’ll go right back to where we were in the ’70s and it’s really a shame.”

-Jim Rutherford, GM of the Pittsburgh Penguins. Ken Campbell of The Hockey News has more....